Juvenile Delinquency
"In the last 70 years many dedicated men and women have devoted their professional lives to the enlightened task of bringing us out of the dark world of Charles Dickens in meeting our responsibilities to the child in our society."
Stewart on Dickens

Excerpt:The Court today uses an obscure Arizona case as a vehicle to impose
upon thousands of juvenile courts throughout the Nation restrictions
that the Constitution made applicable to adversary criminal trials. I believe the Court's decision is wholly unsound as a matter of
constitutional law, and sadly unwise as a matter of judicial policy.

Juvenile proceedings are not criminal trials. They are not civil
trials. They are simply not adversary proceedings. Whether treating
with a delinquent child, a neglected child, a defective child, or
a dependent child, a juvenile proceeding's whole purpose and mission is
the very opposite of the mission and purpose of a prosecution in a
criminal court. The object of the one is correction of a condition. The
object of the other is conviction and punishment for a criminal act.

In the last 70 years many dedicated men and women have devoted their professional lives to the enlightened task of bringing us out of the dark world of Charles Dickens in meeting our responsibilities to the child in our society. The result has been the creation in this century of a system of juvenile and family courts in each of the 50 states. There can be no denying that in many areas the performance of these agencies has fallen disappointingly short of the hopes and dreams of the courageous pioneers who first conceived them.